


The Seven Stages of Grief

by iantosgal



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Coulson doesn't live, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, coping with loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 03:25:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iantosgal/pseuds/iantosgal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at Clint's grief process after Phil's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seven Stages of Grief

_Shock and Denial_

For the first twenty-four hours, Clint was entirely numb.

He listened to Natasha tell him Phil was dead and it was as if the world ceased around him. He nodded but he didn’t take it in. He sat there, staring silently into space until Natasha took his arm and gently dragged him to the room that was now apparently his.

He sat on the edge of the bed and stared into space all night, his mind blank, until Natasha came back the next morning.

“Clint?” she said softly, but he didn’t reply. “Clint, you need to eat something.”

Dimly, his mind acknowledged that she was right. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate. Before Loki took control of his body and used him to murder so many people. Long before that in fact.

He nodded but made no move to stand. He heard her sigh sadly beside him, and that more than anything made him look up.

Her eyes were the only inclination of the emotion inside her, the pain and sadness at the loss of her friend.

There was something else there too and with a lurch of his stomach Clint realised it was pity.

“Don’t,” he said his voice little more than a croak. When had he last had anything to drink?

Natasha tilted her head to the side.

“Don’t what?” she asked.

“Don’t pity me.”

“Clint...”

“Tasha...” he swallowed, his mouth dryer than a desert but he had to get the next words out. “Please...tell me he’s not dead.”

His plea was met with silence.

“He can’t be dead. He’s not dead...I would feel it.”

She reached out and placed a hand on his arm, but he shook it away.

“He’s not dead,” he said more forcefully “he’s not.”

The more he said it the more real it felt. If he just said it enough times, if he just believed strongly enough...then surely, Phil would come walking in that door and pull him into his arms, tell him how sorry he was for scaring Clint and everything would be fine.

Natasha said nothing but joined him on the bed and held him tightly.

“He’s not dead,” he said again, softly.

A drop of water landed on his arm and he couldn’t tell if it was Natasha’s tears or his own.

 

_Pain and Guilt_

He managed to make it out of his room on the second night. He went to the kitchen of Stark tower and drank two pints of water straight off and filling another to take with him. He looked at the food in the fridge but the sight made his stomach turn.

It was the early hours of the morning and he expected to find the living area deserted, but Steve was sat on the sofa watching a disaster movie.

Clint sat beside Steve without a word.

“Hey,” Steve said softly.

Clint simply nodded in return.

“How are you doing?”

Clint shrugged.

“Stupid question I know,” Steve said with a sigh. There were a few moments of silence. “We didn’t know about you and Phil.”

“Why would you?” Clint replied, making Steve look up. “I didn’t even meet you until after he was dead and P...” Clint swallowed. How could it hurt so much just to say his name? “Phil...Phil may have idolised you, but he was a very private man and he barely knew you.”

Steve looked away with a nod of his head. A silence fell between them again and the sounds of the explosions and shouting on the screen filled the room.

“I know how you feel,” Steve said after a while. “I lost someone too.”

“Was it your fault?” Clint asked.

“No,” Steve said, “Not really. He fell and I didn’t catch him.”

“But you didn’t cause his death? You just couldn’t save him?” Clint said shortly.

“I guess,” Steve replied, looking over at Clint with concern.

“Then you don’t know how I feel.”

“Clint...”

“I may as well have stabbed him myself.”

“Clint...”

“I let them in, I killed so many agents , I provided that bastard with a distraction so he could escape and he killed Phil,” he was crying, the tears falling thick and fast down his face and he was too far gone to care.

“No, Clint, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Then why does it feel like it is?” Clint asked. “Why does it feel like I killed him? Why does it hurt so fucking much?”

He looked imploringly up at Steve, eyes begging him for an answer he couldn’t give. Instead, Steve pulled him to him and held him as Clint sobbed.

“I’m so sorry,” Steve whispered, but Clint could barely hear him over the sounds of his own pain.

 

_Anger and Bargaining_

The weeks passed and Clint barely slept, his sleep punctured with hellish dreams where it was Clint that drove the spear through Phil’s chest, where Loki controlled his thoughts and where Phil looked at him with disappointed and accusing eyes, blood slowly turning his white shirt red and Clint ran and ran but he could never get away.

He was tired. God was he tired.

He ate as much as he could but he knew it wasn’t enough. The sight of food made his stomach turn and he only forced it down because Natasha was staring at him.

He withdrew from the others as much as possible. It wasn’t like they were his friends or anything. One fight, no matter how epic, didn’t make you friends. Of course, Natasha still managed to pop up wherever he was and Maria made the odd appearance.

He wished they would just leave him alone. He hated that they were constantly checking up on him. He didn’t need their pity and he didn’t need looking after. Every time Natasha popped her head around his door, he felt a surge of anger and wanted nothing more than to slam the door in her stupid, worried face.

But he didn’t because deep down he knew that she was only trying to look out for him because she was his friend and she loved him. He also knew, if he did, she would hand his ass to him on a plate.

It was about three weeks after Phil’s death that Thor returned to Earth and Stark Tower. When Clint heard his booming voice in the corridor, he felt white hot rage course through his veins. It was irrational, he knew that, but all he could think was that Loki got to go home. After everything he did, he got to walk away. No matter what punishment he might receive on his home planet, he was still breathing and Phil wasn’t.

Clint trashed his room in under a minute as finally, he let his rage spill free. He smashed the mirror, broke the chair, punched a hole in the wall and tore everything from the side, letting it all tumble and smash to the ground.

He stood panting in the middle of the chaos that was his room, before stumbling backwards and dropping on to the end of the bed, his head buried in his hands.

He didn’t move again until there was a knock at the door. Clint ignored them. He wasn’t in the mood to talk to any of them. The knock came again, this time louder.

“Clint, please open the door,” Thor said, his voice carrying easily though the door.

Clint’s head snapped up and he rose quickly to his feet. He strode over to the door and threw it open. Thor stood in the doorway, his arm half raised as if he was about to knock again. They stood staring at each other for a long moment. Finally, Thor cleared his throat.

“Steven has just informed me of your relationship with Phillip,” he stated.

Clint turned away from him and walked back into his room, clasping his hands behind his head as he went. Thor followed him in, casting his eyes around the disarray of the room.

“I had no idea,” he continued. “I cannot tell you how truly sorry I am.”

“Why?” Clint asked, not turning to face Thor.

“I don’t understand,” Thor replied, his eyes showing his confusion.

“Why are you sorry?” he snapped, finally turning back to face Thor. “Because Phil’s dead? Because it was your brother that killed him? Or because your brother walked away with his life?”

“Clint...”

“I had an arrow aimed right between his eyes and you stopped me.”

“I didn’t know, Clint.”

“But you knew what he’d done. He killed so many people, destroyed half the city and he just walked away.”

“He is being punished.”

“Is he? What, I just have to take your word for that? For all we know, he’s sitting pretty back at home right now with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. I could have ended him right there, made him really pay for what he did and you stopped me.”

“He is my brother,” Thor shouted.

“And Phil was my husband,” Clint screamed back at him.

Thor blinked at him.

“I...I didn’t know. Steven just said you were partners.”

“Yeah well,” Clint said. He sighed as all the anger ebbed out of him. “He was a good man, such a good man. He didn’t deserve to die. Oh God...”

He sunk back on to the bed and felt it dip considerably beside him as Thor joined him.

“I am so sorry,” Thor said, a hand coming up to grip the back of Clint’s neck.

“I’d do anything to have him back,” Clint mumbled.

They sat in silence for a while until suddenly a thought hit him with the force of a freight train. He was sat next to a fucking God. He sat bolt upright and grabbed Thor’s arm.

“You could bring him back,” he said with certainty.

“Clint, I can’t. It is beyond my power,” Thor replied sadly.

“But you’re a God. There must be something you can do, or someone you know who has the power to bring him back.”

“I wish there were, truly I do, but it is not possible to bring the dead back to life.”

Clint shook his head. He clung to his conviction that he had found a way to bring Phil back and gripped Thor’s arm tighter.

“No, no, Thor, please. There has to be something. I’ll do anything. I’ll change places with him.”

Thor gripped him by the shoulders tightly and forced Clint to meet his eyes.

“There is no way to bring him back. I’m sorry Clint. I’m so sorry.”

It was like Clint’s heart was breaking all over again.

 

_“Depression”, Reflection, Loneliness_

Clint knew he was starting to scare the others. He barely ate, couldn’t sleep and had hardly moved from his bed in the last week.

Ever since Thor had told him he couldn’t bring Phil back, it was like every last vestige of hope that Clint had unknowingly had, had been destroyed.

He thought about ending it all. Grabbing his gun and putting a bullet through his temple. But the mere thought made him exhausted and so he decided to simply succumb to the void that was filling his heart and mind and waited for starvation to take him.

If only he could stop Natasha force feeding him soup then his plan might actually work. But he didn’t have the energy to fight her.

When Natasha wasn’t pouring soup down his throat, he was alone. He let the silence envelope him and stared at the ceiling. He thinks about Phil. He always thinks about Phil.

He thinks about the first time he saw him and the way his heart stuttered in his chest. He thinks about the early years as handler and asset. Thinks about missions and banter and the way Phil’s eyes sparkled when he laughed. He thinks about their first kiss and their second and their third...he remembers them all. He remembers asking Phil to marry him and his elation when he said yes. He remembers their wedding day and dancing with Phil, singing softly to him under his breath and seeing Phil’s face alight with happiness.

He thinks of sitting on the sofa with Phil and watching bad television when they had a rare moment of downtime. He remembers the sound of Phil’s laugh and the way he stroked his hand through Clint’s hair.

He thinks of silly things but every moment etched into Clint’s memory is precious.

He lays there and thinks of Phil and is hit with a sudden horrible feeling of utter loneliness. It hurts and he realises he doesn’t want to be alone anymore. He needs to be with someone, even if it’s just to sit in silence and stare at the TV, he just needs to know that he’s not alone.

He wanders into the main living area and finds it empty. He sighs in frustration but settles down on the sofa anyway, flicking the TV on and letting a re-run of Friends fill the silence.

He sits staring blankly at the screen for about ten minutes until he hears chattering in the corridor. Tony and Bruce enter the room and stop short when they see him.

“Hey Clint,” Bruce said after a while and joins him in the sofa.

Clint nods in reply but says nothing.

“You mind if we join you, Legolas?” Tony asked and Clint couldn’t help the small smile at the nickname.

“Not at all,” he replied.

Tony wanders off in the direction of the kitchen and there is a lot of banging and clinking. Clint turns up the volume a little but the smile stays on his lips.

“That might be the first time I’ve seen you smile,” Bruce said quietly.

Clint turned to meet Bruce’s eye and felt the smile falter a little. He forgot, he wasn’t supposed to smile. Phil was dead.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean...What I meant to say was...”Bruce stuttered.

“It’s ok,” Clint replied.

Tony came stomping into the room and flopped down in between them. He threw Bruce a beer and held one out to Clint. After a moment’s hesitation, Clint took it. Tony smiled at him and then ripped open the huge bag of chips he had under his arm.

“Ah man, I love this episode,” Tony said through a mouthful of chips. He jumped to his feet, chips falling all over the floor and began to act out the scene alongside Ross. “The pigeon – no, eagle!—flew in and landed on the stove, bursting into flame. The baby seeing this, leaps to the mighty bird’s aid. The eagle, however, misconstrues it as an act of aggression and grabs the baby in its talons! Baby and bird still ablaze are locked in a death grip, swirling around in the whirlpool that fills the apartment.”

It was over the top and loud and he was crunching chips under his feet as he threw himself into the scene. Clint couldn’t help the laugh that broke free and he didn’t miss the happy look the other two shared. He didn’t feel quite so alone any more.

 

_The Upward Turn_

The time he spent with Bruce and Tony watching Friends was the start of it all. He came out of his shell a little more, found himself spending more and more time with the others and less time wallowing on his own.

It was still hard to get up every morning. He would awaken and find himself alone in a bed that was too big for one person. The emptiness and the cold were a stark reminder that he was alone.

But he would pull himself out of the blankets and force himself out of bed. A little voice in his head that sounded oddly like Phil kept telling him to get up, to carry on and Clint didn’t want to disappoint Phil by giving up.

The time he had spent locked away in his room after he first found out had been like a gaping void, a vacuum in time. At the time he had no concept of time and he could have been sat there for hours, day, weeks, months, even years and to him it felt like forever and the blink of an eye simultaneously.

In reality, it had been almost a month since Phil’s death and Clint looked in the mirror and was shocked at what he saw.

He’d lost a hell of a lot of weight and muscle. He weighed himself and felt sick. He’s lost almost three stone. Phil’s voice was back, telling him he needed to get back in shape, telling him the Avengers needed him fighting fit, and people needed him to save them.

He snorted. When did he become a hero rather than an assassin?

But he was an Avenger now. Phil had put so much into the initiative and Clint knew he would be proud to see Clint a part of it.

He changed into his work out gear and headed down to the gym.

He ran on the treadmill for a good hour, working his way up to a flat out run and wasn’t surprised at how hard it was. He lifted weights and got down on the floor to do some sit ups.

After a while he flopped down on to his back, exhausted. He covered his eyes with his arm and tried to catch his breath. Slowly, too slowly for his liking, he became aware of a presence stood over him. He looked up and saw Natasha smiling down at him.

“Hey,” he said.

“On your feet, Hawkeye,” she replied turning away.

He groaned but smiled getting to his feet. She was in her work out gear too and was tying her hair up into a high ponytail. She grabbed the boxing gloves and threw them to Clint before grabbing the pads and turning to face him.

“Let’s go,” she said, smacking the pads together.

He jumped on the spot a few times and then launched himself forwards, punching and kicking with everything he had. Natasha barely stumbled under his onslaught but she smiled proudly at him.

Later, when Fury asked how Clint was doing, she honestly replied that he was devastated but coping just fine.

 

_Reconstruction and Working Through_

Clint looked around the apartment and felt his stomach clench. He hadn’t been back since Phil...since he lost Phil and it was hard to see all of his things exactly as he’d left them. There was a full ashtray which told Clint that Phil had been smoking in the apartment while he’d been stationed babysitting the Tesseract. The milk in the fridge had curdled and the bread was covered in mould. He opened the closet and looked at the suits hung neatly inside next to a few of Clint’s own good shirts. He reached out and pulled one of the jackets off the hanger and hugged it to his chest. It still smelt of Phil and he felt the tears well in his eyes and begin to trickle slowly down his cheeks.

Soft arms wrapped around him from behind and he let himself sink into Natasha’s embrace.

“You don’t have to get rid of them all,” she said, quietly. “You should keep, take them back to the tower.”

Clint shook his head but he hugged the jacket tighter.

“If I do that, what do I do with them? Every time I look at them it will just remind me he’s gone and after a while it won’t even smell like him. Then it will just be a suit jacket.”

“You have to keep some things. Maybe not clothes, but just because he’s gone doesn’t mean you have to get rid of everything.”

“God, Nat, I just want him back.”

Her arms tightened around him and they sat silently while Clint cried into the jacket that had been his favourite on Phil.

Eventually he cleared his throat, got to his feet and folded the jacket carefully before placing it in a box on the bed. He cleared all the suits first, placing them all carefully into the box, his ties receiving the same treatment. He passed Natasha his shirts and she packed them into one of the suitcases they’d brought with them.

He packed up Phil’s shoes and the few casual outfits he’d owned. He opened the bottom drawer of the bedside table and emptied and socks and underpants into a new box whilst Natasha stripped the bed.

Slowly they made their way through the apartment, everything being sorted into piles of Clint’s stuff, things for charity, things to throw away and things of Phil’s to keep.

He’d found Phil’s watch next to the sofa. He’d brought the watch for Phil on their second anniversary and it had been all over the world on missions. It was a little dented and it had a few scratches but Phil had loved that watch. It was joined by his favourite shirt of Phil’s that Clint just couldn’t throw away, Phil’s aftershave, a copy of The Hobbit that Phil had loved and forced Clint to read once (and he had grudgingly had to admit it was good read, even though it wasn’t normally his sort of thing) and some photo’s of the two of them he’d found in Phil’s top bedside drawer.

Once everything was packed up, Clint was kind of shocked to see how little they owned. All of Clint’s stuff fit into two suitcases and Phil’s things were packed into less than ten small boxes.

And yet the apartment felt empty. Everything they did or said echoed in the empty space. His chest ached but he knew he could never stay here. Everyone had moved into the tower anyway, but even if they hadn’t, Clint wouldn’t have stayed. This was their apartment and before that, it had been Phil’s. Every room was filled with memories and Clint just couldn’t be surrounded by all that. He had always run from his past but that wasn’t what he was doing now. He could never run away from Phil.

No, he was taking some of his past with him. Taking Phil with him, but he couldn’t be the man he wanted and needed to be if he stayed here. He couldn’t be the man Phil loved because here, he would drown in that past, drown in his loss.

It was almost midnight when they left and headed back to the tower. Headed back home. They would go back to the apartment tomorrow morning to meet the removal men for the big stuff and take Phil’s stuff to charity.

But the tower was home now, the Avengers were family and they would help him through.

 

_Acceptance and Hope_

An explosion rocked the building Clint was stationed on. He was right near the edge but he maintained his balance and took out the robot that flew past him.

Fucking robots.

Robots were attacking New York. It was something Clint never thought he would see.

“You ok there, Legolas?” Tony asked over the comm. as he flew past.

“I’m peachy,” he replied, reaching for an exploding arrow and letting it fly right at the, err...he’d go with mothership. The arrow exploded and the mothership caught fire, plummeting to the ground.

He could see Natasha and Steve running around on the ground, herding people to safety; a burst of lightening to his left and Thor took out another robot, Hulk grabbed two robots and smashed them together before he approached the burning mothership and smashed his hands down on to it repeatedly. Clint ran to the fire escape and made his way down to the ground, taking out robots with his exploding arrows as he went.

A voice that wasn’t Phil spoke in his ear and for a moment he couldn’t help the familiar sinking feeling in his stomach as he was reminded that Phil was gone. But he could carry on now, he could push it down and get on with the job. He could think about Phil without feeling like his heart was breaking into a million pieces and he didn’t have to fight back tears every time his name was mentioned.

As Hulk finally took out the mothership, the rest of the robots began to fall. A group of bystanders came out of the front of a coffee house on his left, looked at the robot hurtling towards them and screamed. They panicked and in their haste to get away, knocked a small child to the ground, her screaming mother carried away by the terrified crowd.

Clint launched himself towards them, firing an arrow at the robot hoping it would explode before it hit the child. He reached her just as the robot exploded and threw himself over her, shielding her from the falling, burning debris.

Slowly, he looked up, the girl still cradled in his arms. They were surrounded by bits of robot but he was relatively unscathed.

“Marie! Marie!”

He set the little girl down and she ran crying to her mother. Her eyes met his and she smiled her thanks at him. He nodded at her before rushing to join the others.

They were stood in a group around the mothership.

“Clean ups on the way,” Steve said.

“You’re bleeding,” Natasha said, turning his face to the side. There was a small cut on his forehead and the blood was trickling slowly down his face.

“It’s just a scratch,” he said.

She ran a thumb across it and he hissed.

“Don’t be a baby,” She said with a smirk.

He pulled his head away from here and stuck out his tongue. He looked around at the rubble and the devastation.

Yet again, New York would need some major TLC but at least they had kept casualties to a minimum.

A small voice in his ear, that definitely was Phil, said Good Job.

Clint smiled. He knew Phil was gone. Knew he wasn’t coming back. But he wasn’t forgotten. He lived on in Clint’s memories, in his heart. He lived on because Clint could always imagine with Phil would do or say in any situation. He lived on because Clint still needed him, even if it was just a voice in his head showing him the way.

And maybe, one day, they would meet again.


End file.
